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At the Table this Past Sunday

I wanted to share this picture with you. Garrett Laubscher happened to take it during the first worship gathering. It struck me in a beautiful way because I know that it all just, well, happened. Each Sunday when we invite members of our church family to come a preside over the Lord’s Table there’s no method to it. We just ask people to come, serve and see.

Look closely at the picture and witness an embodiment of grace. Standing at the Table is a picture of diversity uncommon for our city, yet possible. It is what the gospel can do when the Church allows the Holy Spirit to work, even when it means pushing us outward to the margins of society.

In the picture to my left is our beloved sister and friend Sally, who leads CenterPeace and was working with some of us this weekend. To my right is a member of our church family, Mabel, an hispanic wife and mother of two. To her right is another member of church family, Frank, who when we first met almost five years ago was living through homelessness. In this picture we see lives represented by gender, nationality, race, sexuality, or social economic status all finding a common seat at the Lord’s table, placing these identity-markers in submission to that which is first important, our baptismal identity.

As society imposes upon us a logic of separation and distinction that tells us to which social categories we should belong, the church announces a different social reality. Any one can find a home with God and His people because each week at His Table we once again proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Lover of all. We have been joined together in Him as a new society and eternal family. We see it at the Lord’s Table every week and catch a small glimpse of it in this picture. Only the crucified and risen Lord who welcomes all could do a thing like that.

Today, Mabel told me that as she watched our church family come together around the Lord’s table in all our beautiful diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and stories:

“I was so overwhelmed with emotion that when I went back to my row I just had tears streaming at what I saw. I’ve been thinking about it all week and sharing what I experienced with people I work with. It was an indescribable moment.”

Thanks be to God our Father who by His Spirit makes us one in Christ and invites us to celebrate our differences, including stories of redemption and grace. I praise God for what he is doing in and among us.

May what we see when we come together in our Sunday worship gatherings open our eyes so we will grow in love, hospitality, and in our desire to see the wrongs in this world made right through the Lordship of Christ living through and among us by His Spirit.

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1 thought on “At the Table this Past Sunday”

Fred, I printed this out for Seniors today. I listed Sydney as a praise for her baptism on prayer-line. Jon asked me to add Mike Derflinger to prayer-line as he is in Riverside NN with a cerebral anurysm.(that’s all I know). Susie communicated to me yesterday that Norma does have pneumonia & has had a number of falls recently. As far as I know, Jim Stapleton was released yesterday from the hospital & is back at Envoy. If I find out differently, I will let you know. My back is out of adjustment so I will be going to chiropractor as soon as possible today. Seniors will be covered by Jean & Shirley, if I am absent. That should be enough for us to get startted on the day! Whew! daBreaux